John Chivington

John Chivington (27 January 1821-4 October 1894) was a colonel of the US Army during the American Civil War and Indian Wars. Chivington would lead Union forces at the Battle of Glorieta Pass against the Confederate States Army on 26-28 March 1862, but he would be most famous as the perpetrator of the Sand Creek massacre of 29 November 1864, in which up to 163 Cheyenne villagers (two-thirds of whom were women and children) were murdered, scalped, and mutilated by Colorado militia.

Biography
John Chivington was born on 27 January 1821 in Lebanon, Ohio, the son of a US Army soldier who had served under William Henry Harrison at the Battle of the Thames in 1813 during the War of 1812. In 1844, he was ordinated as a Methodist preacher, and in 1853 he became a missionary to the Wyandots in Kansas. Chivington was a staunch abolitionist, and he moved to Nebraska after the events of Bleeding Kansas began, moving to Denver in Colorado in 1860.

At the start of the American Civil War, he turned down a commission as a chaplain in the Union Army, deciding that he wanted to fight instead of serving as a priest. He became a major in the 1st Colorado Volunteers under John P. Slough, ambushing the Confederate States Army at Glorieta Pass on 26-28 March 1862 and raising the morale of his forces. In the fall of 1864, Chivington was sent to Fort Lyon to negotiate with the Cheyenne Native American tribe as war loomed, and Chivington ordered his men to attack the Cheyenne villagers. Silas Soule refused to carry out this order and insisted on negotiations, but Chivington's men ignored the white flags flown by the natives and massacred up to 163 Cheyenne villagers, scalping many of them and mutilating the bodies. Chivington had Soule murdered in 1865 for testifying against him, and he resigned from the service that same year. He died in 1894 in Denver, Colorado.